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Comparative literature analyzes literary works from different sources, including different linguistic, cultural, ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds. It covers both fiction and non-fiction and overlaps with other subjects such as history, sociology, linguistics, and religious studies. Three main schools of thought exist: French, German, and American. The field developed in the early 1800s and has been used to examine the origins and influences of literature in relation to dominant cultures and languages.
Comparative literature is the analysis of two or more literary works from different sources. The term can also be applied to an area or item of a group’s literature rather than specific pieces. Different linguistic backgrounds dominate the comparative literature, but backgrounds can also be culturally, ethnically, racially or religiously distinguished. Cases can also be made of comparing literature by age groups in contemporary writers and by experience; for example, war veterans versus non-veterans.
The literature covers both fiction and non-fiction. It is a wide range of written works, which together constitute one of the key elements of a culture’s personal identity. Such written work takes many forms and modalities from diaries and letters to articles and poems. The dominant literary form, when one thinks of the term, is the novel. The novel has only dominated world literature since the late 1700s.
The field of comparative literature is an academic mode of study and investigation. It overlaps with a wide variety of subjects including history, sociology, linguistics, and religious studies. This is because each element is a fundamental part of the background of a literary piece. Such a lack of distinction and the use of other modes of study or investigation have led some critics to question the focus of comparative literature.
Comparative literature studies developed in the early 1800s with the first publications on the subject published in France. At the same time, a number of other comparative studies in the fields of law, biology and linguistics began to develop. National states also began to form and the idea of national identity developed at the same pace. In 1886, Hutcheson Macaulay Pornett fully defined ideas about theory in English.
There are three main schools of thought on comparative literature. The first is the French school, which developed from 1816 onwards and was occupied by the national state. French scholarship and its admirers have used a forensic tool for literature to examine its origins and influences in relation to the dominant culture and language.
The German school was developed after the Second World War by the Hungarian Peter Szondi. Influenced by Eastern European structuralism, Szondi distanced comparative literature from nationalism. This is natural, as Szondi, who was Jewish, spent time in Bergen Belsen. For Szondi and his disciples in Berlin, the social context was more important than politics.
An American school was born out of a distrust of the separation of nations and language groups. Instead of historical detective work, the American school of comparative literature sought to find common links between works of different literature. This includes the search for universal truths.
